Concepts of Vacationing
by Scarabbug
Summary: A simple journey home after yet another day of struggling against nigh impossible odds. It stands to reason that the Sonic crew would end up feeling a little nostalgic. Just how Shadow factors into this, of course, is another matter altogether. Sonic X.


**This was originally a one shot, but ended up being a little spread out. Concrit and reviews are appreciated. **

**NOTE: This story takes place in an Alternate Future of the Sonic X series, and occurs a year or so fter the end of the final season. In this story, Sonic and the others are currently in the human world again, and have been for several months. I'll leave the rest to your imaginations. This fic is connected to "Chaos Mythologies" but I'm trying to make it so that it's not necessary to understand that in order to read this. I am only moderately succeeding with this task. **

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"_A vacation is like love - anticipated with pleasure, experienced with discomfort, and remembered with nostalgia."_ -Author Unknown

Concepts of Vacationing. 

'Someone tell me _why_ he's here again?'

It was roughly the fifteenth time that Amy had asked this question. Nobody had offered her an answer she was satisfied with yet, and Sonic couldn't really say he blamed her. Shadow, for his part remained utterly silent, sitting as far away from them all as he possibly could with his back pressed against the _Phase Typhoon's_ wall.

'I mean, it's not like he's a big fan of ours,' Amy went on, clearly fully aware that Shadow could hear every word she was saying. 'And usually he just shoots off somewhere the second the fight is over. So what's he doing here, going home with us in the _Phase Typhoon_?'

Tails coughed from where he was sitting in the pilot's chair. 'Uh, Amy he's sitting right there, you know.'

'Darn right he's sitting right there. _Some of us _try to be clear and honest with people at all times,' Amy cast Shadow another grim look. 'If I'm gonna talk about him then he might as well be listening.'

Yup. Amy said what she thought and didn't much care who heard, Sonic gave her that. Truth be told, none of them were entirely sure just how Shadow had ended up here in the first place, much less how someone –it was probably Cream– has ended up helping to patch that nasty looking cut on his shoulder. Interestingly enough, Sonic had one on his own shoulder too, in almost exactly the same place. Which didn't mean anything really. It was just an observation.

Shadow offered no reaction, though he did seem to lock eyes with Amy for just a fraction of a second –at a speed only Sonic was likely to catch– before turning away and inspecting some of the loose wires in the roof.

'He did help us out an awful lot today, Amy,' Cream said. Obviously she wasn't feeling quite as nervous around Shadow today as she usually did –she was sitting closer to him than anyone else, for one thing. Less than _six_ _feet_ away. 'Even if he did blow up a lot of stuff. It was very nice of him to get that Neorex's big claws off me.'

'Don't get me wrong,' Amy went on. 'It's not that I'm not grateful for his help –when he's actually helping us and not trying to _kill_ one of us, that is, because be damned if I can work out what the heck he's thinking most of the time!' She leaned back against her own wall, folding her arms and rubbing irritably at the bruise appearing on her elbow. 'It's just that whenever he's around, he's either going to get involved in some fight we're having with whoever the bad guy is at the time, or he's about to _start_ another one altogether. Either way, it never turns out well.'

Sonic grinned. 'I dunno, seems like things worked out just fine today to me. Still, you've really gotta watch it with the blowing holes in stuff, buddy.' he winked at Shadow. 'Nothing personal, just that the police don't seem to like it when we make more mess than the bad guys did in the first place.'

Shadow continued inspecting the ceiling, giving them no sign that he was even acknowledging their presence, much less listening to Amy's ranting and Sonic's jokes. Figured. He always was like that. Still, it was cool of him to help them out, whatever his reasoning was this time around (Amy was right really –Sonic could never figure out what the guy was up to, either).

'You're hardly one to talk, Sonic,' Chris smiled vaguely. 'You were putting an awful lot of holes in stuff down there yourself.'

Sonic shrugged. 'Hey, what can I say? If they're _gonna_ put walls in inconvenient places then a guy's gonna spin into 'em...'

'But that one was a _support wall_ holding up most of the building.' Chris pointed out, holding a battered hover shoe up in the air. 'And just look what the crash landing did to your shoes. Contrary to popular belief, I can't conjure up these things overnight you know.'

'Really?'

'_Really_.'

'Oh...' Sonic rubbed his nose. 'Sorry about that. Guess I got a little carried away.'

'Right,' Amy said. 'And then Shadow went and finished the job that Sonic started and darn near brought the whole _factory_ down on us! I mean honestly, it's not like we even _needed_ the help. We were handling it just fine until he... stormed in on a damn _motorcycle_! For goodness sakes, where did he even _get_ a motorcycle?'

'Why don't you ask him?' Cream suggested politely, pointing in Shadow's direction. 'He's sitting right there.'

'Alright, fine!' Amy turned and looked –or rather glared– in the dark hedgehog's direction. 'Hey, Shadow! Where'd you get the Motorcycle?'

Shadow made no comment. He didn't even twitch, or shift his eyes in Amy's direction, or give any indication that he had heard a word she said. He looked pretty cheesed off. 'See?' Amy said irritably. 'That's not exactly what I'd call gratitude. If he's going to use our equipment for a free ride home, then he could at least acknowledge us.'

'Well, I think he may have blinked a little...' Cream suggested. 'That's a start.'

'Wow, he blinks,' Knuckles said dryly, offering his first comment of the entire trip. He'd been weirdly quiet for the last half an hour, but Sonic figured that was probably something to do with being stuck on the floor and forbidden from moving. 'You know I've never actually _seen_ him do tha— Ow!'

Amy had given the supine echidna a whack on the head. 'Hey! What've I told you, mister? Lie still and be quiet, otherwise it'll just hurt more later.'

'Urgh... and you _hitting me_ is going to fix the problem, I suppose? Anyway lying like this is making my back ache.'

'Well you should've thought about that before you went and got your arm broken in the first place, shouldn't you?'

Knuckles grunted in frustration. 'I still don't see how lying _flat on the ground_ is supposed to be beneficial. It's my _arm_ that's broken not my legs.'

'Oh, well, I don't _know_, but this is what they did on that TV show Mrs Thorndyke was crying over the other day,' Amy shrugged. 'Just don't expect me to start sobbing over you too, or anything. A cute medical physician in a coma you sure aren't.'

'Wouldn't –ngh– _dream_ of it.' Knuckles grunted, folding his good arm behind his head and staring up at the ceiling. 'Chaos damned it, I need a vacation.'

Chris looked up from where he was trying to repair one of Sonic's hover shoes. 'Knuckles, have you ever even _had_ a vacation before?'

Knuckles blinked, looking straight up at the ceiling. 'Good question. Actually now that you mention it, I don't think I have. It's not the kind of thing a Guardian usually factors into their life plan.'

Sonic sniggered. 'Yeah, lying around on that Master Emerald all day must be a real pain in the butt, huh? No vacation time for you.'

Knuckles growled. He probably would've yelled had he not been in some obvious amount of pain.

'Firstly, Sonic. I don't _lie_ _on top_ of the Master Emerald. Ever. That would be improper and... And...'

'Unguardianly?' Cream suggested.

'Yeah, exactly. Secondly, the fact that _you_ spend most of the day lying around on rooftops might mean that _you_ have nothing better to do with your time, but if you think that guarding one of the most power sources of energy in the known universe—'

'_And_ sitting around on your behind all day.' Sonic grinned.

'—Is easy, then you... oh for goodness sakes, you just don't get it!'

'Knuckles, lie still!' Amy hit him again.

'Ow! Jeeze, you know you're not _helping_, right?'

'Guys, guys!' Chris groaned. 'I'm sorry I asked. Knuckles is right, anyway,' he leaned back against a metal wall frowning. Looking at his eyes, Sonic could almost imagine him as the eighteen year old he was supposed to be, stuck in the body of his twelve year old self. They never had worked out how to fix that little problem after they returned here from the other world and the Neorex came after them. 'We do kind of need a vacation, not that we're ever going to _get_ one.'

Amy sighed, folding her arms behind her head. 'Yeah. I wouldn't even ask for much. Just to go somewhere with no Neorex taking over warehouses...'

'And no Eggman trying to take over the world,' Sonic added, smiling at the thought.

'And ice cream?' Cream added, hopefully.

'Hey, sure, why not?' Sonic shrugged. 'So long as I don't have to take the water that comes with it.'

'What exactly, pray tell, Sonic, does water have to do with ice cream?'

Sonic gave Knuckles a look which (he hoped) clearly stated the word "_Duh_?". 'Because you eat it at the beach? Obviously, Knuc'ster. You really need to get out more.'

'You know, I _still_ have my other arm and both feet, Sonic. Don't push your luck.'

Everyone groaned, seemingly in unison, and Cream tapped the tips of her toes together. 'Back in our world, momma used to take me to the park for ice cream,' she smiled, curling up happily at the thought. 'There was a nice old raccoon who worked at a stall, and he used to give me more than one topping. We always tried to give him extra money, but he said my smiles would pay for it. And then we'd walk down to the lake to eat them. I guess that was kind of like a vacation, wasn't it? Even if it only ever lasted one afternoon.'

'Yeah,' Amy sighed, her irritation being replaced by that dreamy look Sonic usually associated with her being about to bear-hug (or rather, hedgehog-hug) him. He was fairly sure she _wasn't_ about to do that, but he scooted away half a foot, just in case. 'There's nothing like an afternoon at the park when you're a little kid. If I were home right now, you know where I'd be?'

'Nope,' Knuckles muttered. 'Enlighten us.'

Amy ignored his tone of voice. Pretty much everyone else did, too. 'I'd be out in my garden with my flowers in the nice, bright sunshine. And maybe I'd go into Acorn Town and make wishes on the fountain in the square. We could go there together when we get home, don't you think Sonic?!' She smiled at him excitedly and would probably have looped an arm through his had she not been sitting halfway across the room with Knuckles stuck in between them. 'And woe betide any Neorex that tried to ruin _our_ afternoon!'

'Uh. Sure, Amy.' Why not? Wishes were cool, and this trail of thought was at least better than her rant about the black and red hedgehog who was still sitting stock still at the other end of the shuttle. He really can't blame her for being annoyed, but you'd think she'd be a little happier about, you know, having come through all of this alive for the umpteenth unbelievable time.

Sonic isn't sure exactly when staying alive became so _hard_.

'What about you, Chris?' he asked, mostly as a means to break the rather disturbing train of thought that's beginning to form in his mind. 'There was that lodge we went to in the woods, right?'

'Yeah, that was always fun. But we went to the island sometimes, too.'

'That island your dad owns?' Amy asked.

'Yeah. We'd alternate between one place and the other, but both were awesome. Plus, no one really knew me either place. That was kind of nice.'

'Why's that, Chris?' Cream asked, curiously.

Chris shrugged, putting the hover shoe down on the floor and smiling at her. 'Well, the thing about meeting people on holiday is that you don't really have time to get to know each other very well, because you're only going to be there for a couple of weeks. So you just accept everything about each other as best you can. Even the kids I met who already knew my dad owned the island didn't really _care_ about it. Nobody was ever intimidated or anything. It's not a formula that works for long, though,' Chris finished. 'You can't take the friends you meet on holiday home with you after all, so it doesn't last.'

'That's kind of a shame. It's sad to make friends and then have to leave them so soon afterwards,' Cream said, with what sounded like far too much understanding for a seven year old girl. Sonic tried very hard not to think of a pair of blue eyes and pink buds blossoming around a smiling face, but he knew fine well that it was what all of them were stuck on. Maybe even Shadow. He'd tried to take her out before she gave up herself instead, after all...

It only took so long before Sonic felt he had to break the uneasy silence which had fallen over the whole group. 'Meh, I'm not crazy about islands. They've gotta be surrounded by _something_, and that something is usually water.'

'You didn't mind _some_ islands, Sonic,' Tails smiled, leaving the aircraft on auto pilot so that he could turn around and join the conversation. 'We used to hang out on Angel Island all the time, remember? We'd run out there in the Original Tornado.'

'Yeah, but that was in the _sky_, buddy,' Sonic pointed upwards. 'No water up there.'

'And didn't you just delight in that?' Knuckles muttered. 'Not to mention delight in messing up my homeland like it was a public park. Anyway, Sonic, you don't need a holiday; your life is a _permanent_ vacation.'

'Hey, I save the world now and then so I think I earned the right to lounge around in it,' Sonic shrugged. 'A hedgehog burns up a lot of energy from all that running, you know.'

'So, Tails,' Amy said quickly clearly not willing to let yet another argument start up. 'You guys vacationed on the Angel Island?'

'Oh, yeah.' Tails smiled broadly at the memory. 'Back when we were younger. That was awesome. I remember the first time Sonic showed me the place –you remember that, Sonic?'

'Sure do. You flew us up there and kept trying to make me take swimming lessons in the lake.'

'Yeah and you didn't _always_ chicken out,' Tails smiled.

'Hey!' Sonic muttered, closing his eyes in mock annoyance. 'It wasn't _ever _chickening out; it's just a natural dislike of H2O, is all.'

There was a moment of half laughter before Chris spoke: 'What about you Shadow?'

Silence.

Sonic cracked an eye open and looked curiously in Shadow's direction. Everyone had fallen oddly quiet and all that he could hear was turbulence and the nervous _tap, tap, tap_ of Tails' fingers against the control panel. Tails himself had turned away again and was back to piloting, Cream was glancing back and forth between Amy and Sonic in confusion. Knuckles, for his part, kept staring bluntly at the ceiling.

Shadow was looking at Chris, who seemed to be starting to realise he'd just asked the worst question imaginable and was struggling to think of a way to get out of it. 'Um... I mean...'

Knuckles coughed meaningfully. Chris let the sentence trail off incomplete and looked away from Shadow quickly. Shadow's gaze however, didn't wander. Sonic had seen him do that before, actually. He could never for the life of him work out what it was that Shadow was looking for.

Even after all this time they didn't know so much about how Shadow had been created. They just knew about Space Colony ARK, and a girl named Maria who died too young. That she had been his friend. They knew that he was "The Ultimate Life Form", whatever that was supposed to mean, and that he'd survived things that should've destroyed him several times over. One way or another, he always seemed to come back. Sometimes on their side, sometimes against them. Sometimes charging through walls on motorcycles, and other times, Sonic would find him just _there_. Watching them from some safe distance but never becoming involved.

Yeah. Sonic had a feeling that "vacation" wasn't a word which factored into Shadow's vocab.

'Um... so...' Amy said eventually. 'I... guess our point is made right? We need a break. Pretty much all of us,' she glimpsed at Shadow surreptitiously. He looked back at her and she flinched away with none of her previous sharp tongued enthusiasm. Chris looked like he wanted to hide behind something. Knuckles was whistling to himself, and Cream was joining in with him, clearly thinking it was a game of sorts.

Yeah. _Awkward_.

The sudden jerking and sputtering sound of the engines starting to fail, followed by Tails' anxious yelp, couldn't have come at a better second.

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End file.
